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THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

Film (1970)

This parody was directed by Billy Wilder, who also co-wrote it with I. A. L. Diamond. A non-canonical tale, it saw Holmes (played by Robert Stephens) and Watson (Colin Blakely) take on a particularly strange case that involved missing midgets, naval experiments, and the Loch Ness monster. Controversially for Holmes fans, it was also the first movie to feature jokes about a supposed gay relationship between Holmes and Watson. Accompanying the movie was a notably rich musical score by Miklos Rózsa, based on his own violin concerto.

338 THE WORLD OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

THE SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION

Film (1976)

An adaptation of a pastiche, this movie is based on Nicholas Meyer’s imaginative 1974 novel of the same title (see p.341). It shows a cocaine- addicted Holmes becoming highly paranoid about being persecuted by mathematics expert Professor Moriarty, who is portrayed here as a feeble, elderly man. Holmes is persuaded to follow Moriarty to Vienna, unaware that Watson and Mycroft Holmes have a hidden agenda—they want him to be treated for his addiction by the world-famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. The cast included Nicol Williamson as the blighted Holmes, Laurence Olivier as Moriarty, and Alan Arkin as Freud.

THE CRUCIFER OF BLOOD

Stage (1978)

Written and directed by Paul Giovanni, this play was based on The Sign of Four. It first opened on Broadway, and employed state- of-the-art lighting to recreate the river chase scene on stage. It later opened in London and Los Angeles, where Jeremy Brett played Watson. In 1991, it was turned into a movie starring Charlton Heston.

MURDER BY DECREE

Film (1979)

Of the various, often outlandish, treatments of theories about the British royal family’s involvement in the Jack the Ripper killings, this was one of the most accomplished. The movie dealt with largely discredited theories about Jack’s identity, and this British/Canadian co-production boasted Christopher Plummer as an emotionally-charged incarnation of Holmes. The great detective is enlisted after the grisly dispatch of the third prostitute to die at the Ripper’s hands, “Long Liz” Stride, and discovers the involvement of the British Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, and the Freemasons.

THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

Television (1984–1994)

Produced by Granada Television, this adaptation ran over six series, and featured 41 episodes based on the original stories. The great detective was played by Jeremy Brett, who for many devotees is the archetypal Holmes, portraying him as deeply intense and edgy. Watson was initially played by David Burke, then later by the long-serving Edward Hardwicke. The series was immensely popular, being broadcast in the UK and the US, and is widely considered to be the most faithful representation of Conan Doyle’s stories to date. The later series produced were entitled The Return, The Casebook, and The Memoirs.

THE MASKS OF DEATH

Film (1984)

This movie marks the last appearance as Holmes by Peter Cushing, who, then 71 years old, needed persuasion to take the part. Watson was played by fellow big-screen veteran John Mills, age 76. Set in 1913, the now-retired detective is brought in by the police after bodies are found in the Thames River, their faces frozen in a rictus of terror, but with no visible causes of death. In a separate, or possibly linked, case, he is asked to find a missing prince in order to prevent war between Britain and Germany.

SHERLOCK’S LAST CASE

Stage (1987)

Written by Charles Marowitz and directed by A. J. Antoon, this play is sometimes confused with one of the same name produced by Matthew Lang in 1974. This play was a dark comedy with Holmes, played by Frank Langella, receiving death threats from the evil son of the late Moriarty, and then being imprisoned by a frustrated Watson. Marowitz added some interesting changes to the Holmes formula, and the play was well reviewed.

THE SECRET OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

Stage (1988)

This play was written by Jeremy Paul, who had previously created several episodes of the Granada Television series featuring Jeremy Brett as Holmes. By the time of the play, the troubled actor had an ambiguous attitude to the character, and the results on stage were considered controversial. The drama featured just two characters, with Edward Hardwicke as Watson. Although the play received poor reviews, the actors’ performances were praised. The “secret” alluded to in the title, as in Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, was that the Machiavellian Moriarty was a concoction of Holmes’s drug-addled brain.

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SHERLOCK HOLMES… THE DEATH AND LIFE

Stage (2008)

This is the second Holmes play written by David Stuart Davies, and as in the first, Roger Llewellyn was cast as the great detective. Rather than following a canonical tale or creating a simple pastiche, Davies explored the relationship between a fictional character and his creator. In the play, Conan Doyle is now tired of Holmes, and desperate to rid himself of his famous character, he creates the evil Moriarty to do his bidding. Holmes, of course, proves more resilient than Conan Doyle anticipated, and the adventure begins. This was an interesting play, where characters flitted between fantasy and reality.

SHERLOCK HOLMES

Film (2009)

Directed by Guy Ritchie, who is best known for his “Cockney crime” movies, this is a tongue-in-cheek rebooting of the Holmes genre that sees the detective transformed into a Hollywood-style action hero. Set in Victorian London, it is a non-canonical tale with Holmes and Watson played by Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. The plot, which has elements of science fiction and the supernatural, sees the detective pair form an unlikely alliance with former enemy Irene Adler. Together they must first save Britain, the US, and then the whole world from the late Lord Blackwood—recently raised from the dead. At the end, Adler reveals her connections to Moriarty, opening the prospect of a sequel, which followed in 2011.

SHERLOCK

Television (2010–)

Produced by the BBC, and starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes, and Martin Freeman as Watson, this innovative series remolded the great detective for the twenty-first century audience. Hence Holmes gains a mobile phone and GPS, but loses his famous “three-pipe problem” to multiple nicotine patches. The series co-creators, Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss, based some episodes on Conan Doyle’s originals. Existing characters, were repurposed, such as Irene Adler, here seen as a dominatrix, and new ones introduced. These included Holmes’s parents, played by Wanda Ventham and Timothy Carlton, the real-life parents of Benedict Cumberbatch.

SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS

Film (2011)

This was the sequel to the 2009 movie staring Robert Downey Jr., again directed by Guy Ritchie. It has the same light-hearted, fast-paced, all-action approach as the original movie, and sees Watson having ended the detecting partnership in order to marry his sweetheart, Mary Morstan. Now working alone, Holmes uncovers a plot by Moriarty to embroil all of Europe in war, which will benefit his recently acquired munitions and arms supplies manufacturers. Naturally, the newly married Watson is soon at Holmes’s side in the case. This sequel introduced Stephen Fry as Mycroft, Holmes’s brother, and Jared Harris as a chillingly quiet Moriarty.

ELEMENTARY

Television (2012–)

Set in modern-day New York, this series was produced by CBS Television Studios. Holmes, played by Jonny Lee Miller, has been sent to New York from London by his father to help him recover from his drug addiction. To watch over and support him, his father has employed a former surgeon, Dr. Joan Watson, played by Lucy Liu. Holmes’s previous detective work for Scotland Yard is known to the NYPD, which naturally makes use of his services, and Watson becomes Holmes’s new apprentice. Interestingly, this was the first Holmes television series produced in the US since Ronald Howard’s outings in 1953. Having proved popular with viewers, several series have been produced.

MR. HOLMES

Film (2015)

Starring Sir Ian McKellen as the great detective, this movie is set just after World War II. Holmes, now in his nineties and long-since retired, shies away from the fame of his younger days, wishing only to tend to his bees in solitude. Where once he battled criminals, now he fights senility, as he struggles with short-term memory loss. The movie centers on Holmes’s last case, and his annoyance at the way Watson (now deceased) embellished the facts and changed the outcome when publishing the story. Eager to set the record straight, Holmes must try to remember the events as they happened so many years before. This movie is a moving portrayal of Holmes at his most human.

HOLMES BY OTHER HANDS

M

any authors have attempted to create new adventures for the great detective, and while some have offered clever variations on the originals, others fatally lack their fire and invention. Even during Conan Doyle’s lifetime, writers were eager to take on the Holmesian mantle, including Vincent Starrett, who wrote The Adventure of the Unique Hamlet in 1920. Other pastiches soon followed, but the first significant work came in 1944 with the Ellery Queen anthology, The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes. As the 20th century progressed, Holmes’s opponents became increasingly bizarre. Pitted against Dracula, and battling H. G. Wells’s Martians with Professor Challenger, it is no wonder that he later seeks help from psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.

THE EXPLOITS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

Adrian Conan Doyle &John Dickson Carr (1954)

Consisting of twelve short stories, this was a collaboration between Conan Doyle’s son and Dickson Carr, a celebrated writer of golden-age crime fiction. Their plan was to extrapolate plot ideas from hints given by Watson in the original canon, and for them to write each new story together. The tales include “The Adventure of the Highgate Miracle” and “The Adventure of the Abbas Ruby.” They are regarded as hit-or-miss by Holmes fans, but enjoyed some success. Several of the stories appeared in Collier’s Weekly magazine, like the originals.

SHERLOCK HOLMES VS. JACK THE RIPPER

Ellery Queen/Paul Fairman (1966)

Also known as Ellery Queen vs. Jack the Ripper, this is a skillful novelization of James Hill’s 1965 film. Here, Fairman writes as Ellery Queen, mystery writer and amateur detective, who takes the place of Holmes in a plot where a decadent aristocracy is not to be trusted. It is considered the first real modern Holmes pastiche, and also marks the first of numerous encounters between the detective and fellow Victorian Jack the Ripper.

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

Michael & Mollie Hardwick (1970)

This novelization was based on

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes,

the largely parodic 1970 screenplay by Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond (p.337). Adhering closely to the original storyline, this adventure features many mysterious elements, including a distraught woman, an absent husband, a Scottish castle, and even the Loch Ness monster. It also makes a comic play on the nature of Holmes’s and Watson’s friendship. The idea that they were a gay couple was fully explored later in 1971, in Larry Townsend’s camp, bawdy tale, The Sexual Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE PEERLESS PEER

Philip José Farmer (1974)

In this quirky and inventive tale, set during World War I, respected American science-fiction writer Farmer sends an aged Holmes and Watson in pursuit of a devilish new weapon in Africa. It marks another occasion where the pair encounter a well-known fictional character— this time, Lord Greystoke, better known as Tarzan. It is an exciting tale with elements of the science-fiction genre.

THE RETURN OF MORIARTY

John Gardner (1974)

Gardner had already proved himself a successful pasticheur with his Boysie Oaks espionage novels— comic riffs on Ian Fleming’s James Bond—before turning his attention to Holmes. Set in evocatively described Victorian London, Moriarty is center stage, having been brought back from the dead,

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like Holmes before him. The plot is ripe with criminality, and is richly conveyed, with Moriarty and Sal Hodges, his prostitute-mistress, at its heart. Together they manipulate everything from blackmail to murder. In 1975 Gardner wrote a sequel, The Revenge of Moriarty.

THE SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION

Nicholas Meyer (1974)

A bestseller in New York when first published, this novel offers an abundance of new ideas to the Holmes genre, and often emulates Conan Doyle’s own elegant writing style. The case involves a sinister kidnapping and the threat of war, though as the title suggests, the detective’s drug addiction is central. To cure his dependence, Holmes needs help, turning to none other than psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Meyer later wrote the Holmes pastiches The West End Horror (1976) and The Canary Trainer (1993).

THE GIANT RAT OF SUMATRA

Richard L. Boyer (1976)

To most Holmes devotees, the references to cases that were not included in the canon provoke keen speculation, and none more so than the mention of the “Giant Rat of Sumatra” in “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire.” According to Holmes, it is “a story for which the world is not yet prepared.” This tale is allegedly based on a manuscript found in a London bank vault after Watson’s demise. Featuring death and a murderous animal, it has similarities to The Hound of the Baskervilles, although the perpetrator is a surprise—an old face from the canon. Other Holmes short stories by Boyer include “The Adventure of Bell Rock Light” and “The Adventure of the Eyrie Cliff.”

EXIT SHERLOCK HOLMES

Robert Lee Hall (1977)

Crossing over into science fiction, this is a highly inventive novel that has both Holmes and his brother, Mycroft, lined up once again against a revivified Moriarty. Holmes, now retired, features only sparingly, and it is Watson who plays the central role, which may frustrate Holmes fans. However, the book reveals many hitherto undisclosed “facts.” Where did Holmes acquire his astonishing skills? What are the secrets of his shadowy brother? And what is the relationship between Holmes and Moriarty? There is a particularly unexpected twist at the end.

THE LAST SHERLOCK HOLMES STORY

Michael Dibdin (1978)

This is a darkly Gothic novel, almost phantasmagorical, in which Holmes and Watson are on the trail of Jack the Ripper in the East End of Victorian London. Unusually, Conan Doyle himself appears as a character, a medical friend of Watson given permission by him to write up the case, and Moriarty also features in the tale. While the plot follows the familiar Ripper murders, as other authors have done, Dibdin’s approach is highly audacious. The novel is considered by Holmesians as controversial, and divides opinion.